We’ve pulled together the biggest list of free ux ebooks on the internet that will help you to design a better user experience / ux, conduct better user research and improve your usability. You won’t find a list this extensive anywhere else. Please share with your colleagues using the social links above and let us know on Twitter which books you liked the best.

How’s this year been? Good? Bad? Well however you’re feeling, we’ve got something guaranteed to put a smile on your face and keep your brain engaged over christmas – our favourite UX books! Our aim is to make sure you go back to work buzzing with ideas and inspiration to beat your competition! UX is one of the best ways you can attract customers whilst lowering your marketing spend (you can’t beat the power and free cost of word-of-mouth recommendations). It’s also incredibly interesting to learn about – it’s like dipping inside the user’s mind and seeing things clearly for the first time.

Photo: Lisa showcasing our vast collection of books at Keepitusable. We like learning!

So, to avoid getting brain fuzz over christmas and instead get a head full of inspiring ideas and solutions, we’re sharing with you our favourite UX books.

There’s still time to order these books on Amazon for christmas.

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug

Best book for: People who are fairly new to UX and would like a greater understanding.

Written in an engaging, light-hearted style, that is interesting and succinct, we highly recommend Steve Krug’s ‘Don’t Make Me Think’. It’s a thin book, with helpful illustrations that highlight Krug’s main points.

Each volume is a concise and fresh take on an important field in web design. Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers explores what the web’s new lingua franca means for working designer/developers. Dan Cederholm’s CSS3 for Web Designers shows how you can design for the experience layer today. Erin Kissane’s The Elements of Content Strategyexplains where content strategy came from, and how you can do it well. Ethan Marcotte’s Responsive Web Design demonstrates CSS techniques and design principles for crafting fluid, responsive websites. Aarron Walter’s Designing for Emotion will teach you how to you make your users fall in love with your site, while Luke Wroblewski’s Mobile Firstwill make you a master of mobile, and improve your desktop designs, too. Last but not least, Mike Monteiro’s Design Is a Job will help you do your job better, while Karen McGrane’s Content Strategy for Mobile will teach you everything you need to get your content onto mobile devices (and more).

100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People by Susan Weinschenk

Best book for: Beginners to intermediates who want to understand more of the psychology and reasoning behind design effects on the user.

Gain quick tips to improve your user interface design based on psychology and understanding how people can be influenced by design.Another slim book but packed full of tips to increase engagement of interfaces based on psychology and previous research findings. Written by psychologist Dr Susan Weinschenk, this is one of Lisa’s favourite books. Great for understanding the subtleties of design that can impact the end user.

We like books that have a lot of succinct, useful content and this is one. A great book full of all the principles you need to know to design for people. It’s a great reference tool that every designer should have on their bookshelf to dip in and out of. It covers all kinds of design principles – from those used in digital interface design to physical product design.

Although, not strictly a UX book, we love this book so much we had to recommend it to you!

Written by the creators of Basecamp, 37 Signals. This book will change the way you think about business and how you do business. They question the status quo, do things differently and they’ve been an incredible success. Our copy is full of post-its! Buy this book!